2 Corinthians 2:5-6:13

The Voice

⁵ But if anyone has caused harm, he has not so much harmed me as he has—and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here—harmed all of you. ⁶ In my view, the majority of you have punished him well enough. ⁷ So instead of continuing to ostracize him, I encourage you to offer him the grace of forgiveness and the comfort of your acceptance. Otherwise, if he finds no welcome back to the community, I’m afraid he will be overwhelmed with extreme sorrow and lose all hope. ⁸ So I urge you to demonstrate your love for him once again. ⁹ I wrote these things to you with a clear purpose in mind: to test whether you are willing to live and abide by all my counsel. ¹⁰ If you forgive anyone, I forgive that one as well. Have no doubt, anything that I have forgiven—when I do forgive—is done ultimately for you in the presence of the Anointed One. ¹¹ It’s my duty to make sure that Satan does not win even a small victory over us, for we don’t want to be naïve and then fall prey to his schemes.

¹² When I arrived at Troas, bringing the good news of the Anointed, the Lord opened a door there for me. ¹³ Yet my spirit was restless because I could not find my brother Titus. Eventually I told them good-bye and set out for Macedonia.

¹⁴ Yet I am so thankful to God, who always marches us to victory under the banner of the Anointed One; and through us He spreads the beautiful fragrance of His knowledge to every corner of the earth. ¹⁵ In a turbulent world where people are either dying or being rescued, we are the sweet smell of the Anointed to God our Father. ¹⁶ To those who are dying, they smell the stench of death in us. And to those being rescued, we are the unmistakable scent of life. Who is worthy of this calling? ¹⁷ For we are nothing like the others who sell the word of God like a commodity. Do not be mistaken; our words come from God with the utmost sincerity, always spoken through the Anointed in the presence of God.

3 Are we back to page one? Do we need to gather some recommendations to prove our validity to you? Or do we need to take your letter of commendation to others to gain credibility? ² You are our letter, every word burned onto our^[a] hearts to be read by everyone. ³ You are the living letter of the Anointed One, the Liberating King, nurtured by us and inscribed, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God—a letter too passionate to be chiseled onto stone tablets, but emblazoned upon the human heart.

⁴ This is the kind of confidence we have in and through the Anointed toward our God. ⁵ Don’t be mistaken; in and of ourselves we know we have little to offer, but any competence or value we have comes from God. ⁶ Now God has equipped us to be capable servants of the new covenant, not by authority of the written law which only brings death, but by the Spirit who brings life.

⁷ Now consider this: if the ministry of death, which was chiseled in stone, came with so much glory that the Israelites could not bear to look at Moses’ face even as that glory was fading, ⁸ imagine the kind of greater glory that will accompany the ministry of the Spirit. ⁹ If glory ushered in the ministry that offers condemnation, how much more glory will attend the ministry that promises to restore and set the world right? ¹⁰ In fact, what seemed to have great glory will appear entirely inglorious in the light of the greater glory of the new covenant. ¹¹ If something that fades away possesses glory, how much more intense is the glory of what remains?

¹² In light of this hope that we have, we act with great confidence and speak with great courage. ¹³ We do not act like Moses who covered his face with a veil so the children of Israel would not stare as the glory of God faded from his face.^{[b] 14} Their minds became as hard as stones; for up to this day when they read the old covenant, the same veil continues to hide that glory; this veil is lifted only through the Anointed One. ¹⁵ Even today a veil covers their hearts when the words of Moses are read; ¹⁶ but in the moment when one turns toward the Lord, the veil is removed. ¹⁷ By “the Lord” what I mean is the Spirit, and in any heart where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is liberty. ¹⁸ Now all of us, with our faces unveiled, reflect the glory of the Lord as if we are mirrors; and so we are being transformed, metamorphosed, into His same image from one radiance of glory to another, just as the Spirit of the Lord accomplishes it.

4 Since we are joined together in this ministry as a result of the mercy shown to all of us by God, we do not become discouraged. ² Instead, we have renounced all the things that hide in shame; we refuse to live deceptively or use trickery; we do not pollute God’s Word with any other agenda. Instead, we aim to tell the truth plainly, appealing to the conscience of every person under God’s watchful eye. ³ Now if our gospel remains veiled, it is only veiled from those who are lost and dying, ⁴ because the evil god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers. As a result the light of the good news, the radiant glory of the Anointed—who is the very image of God—cannot shine down on them. ⁵ We do not preach about ourselves. The subject of all our sermons is Jesus, the Anointed One. He is Lord and Master of all. For Jesus’ sake we are here to serve you. ⁶ The God who spoke light into existence, saying, “Let light shine from the darkness,”^[c] is the very One who sets our hearts ablaze to shed light on the knowledge of God’s glory revealed in the face of Jesus, the Anointed One.

⁷ But this beautiful treasure is contained in us—cracked pots made of earth and clay—so that the transcendent character of this power will be clearly seen as coming from God and not from us. ⁸ We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. ⁹ We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. ¹⁰ We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, His resurrection life rises and reveals its wondrous power in our bodies as well. ¹¹ For while we live, we are constantly handed over to death on account of Jesus so that His life may be revealed even in our mortal bodies of flesh. ¹² So death is constantly at work in us, but life is working in you.

¹³ We share the same spirit of faith as the one who wrote the psalm, “I believed; therefore I spoke.”^[d] We also believe, and that belief leads us to acknowledge ¹⁴ that the same God who resurrected the Lord Jesus will raise us with Jesus and will usher us all together into His presence. ¹⁵ All of this is happening for your good. As grace is spread to the multitudes, there is a growing sound of thanks being uttered by those relishing in the glory of God.

¹⁶ So we have no reason to despair. Despite the fact that our outer humanity is falling apart and decaying, our inner humanity is breathing in new life every day. ¹⁷ You see, the short-lived pains of this life are creating for us an eternal glory that does not compare to anything we know here. ¹⁸ So we do not set our sights on the things we can see with our eyes. All of that is fleeting; it will eventually fade away. Instead, we focus on the things we cannot see, which live on and on.

5 We know that if our earthly house—a mere tent that can easily be taken down—is destroyed, we will then live in an eternal home in the heavens, a building crafted by divine—not human—hands. ² Currently, in this tent of a house, we continue to groan and ache with a deep desire to be sheltered in our permanent home ³ because then we will be truly clothed and comfortable, protected by a covering for our current nakedness. ⁴ The fact is that in this tent we anxiously moan, fearing the naked truth of our reality. What we crave above all is to be clothed so that what is temporary and mortal can be wrapped completely in life. ⁵ The One who has worked and tailored us for this is God Himself, who has gifted His Spirit to us as a pledge toward our permanent home.

⁶ In light of this, we live with a daring passion and know that our time spent in this body is also time we are not present with the Lord. ⁷ The path we walk is charted by faith, not by what we see with our eyes. ⁸ There is no doubt that we live with a daring passion, but in the end we prefer to be gone from this body so that we can be at home with the Lord. ⁹ Ultimately it does not matter whether we are here or gone; our purpose stays fixed, and that is to please Him. ¹⁰ In time we will all stand in judgment before the throne of the Anointed, the Liberating King, to receive what is just for our conduct (whether it be good or bad) while we lived in this temporary body.

¹¹ So because we stand in awe of the one true Lord, we make it our aim to convince all people of the truth of the gospel; God sees who we really are, and I hope in some way that you’ll look deeply into your consciences to see us as well. ¹² But we hope you understand that we are not trying to prove ourselves to you or pull together a résumé that will impress you. We are simply hoping that you will find a sense of joy in connecting with us. And when you are approached by others (who may value appearances more than the heart) asking questions about us, you will be able to offer an answer for them. ¹³ If we seem out of control or act like fanatics, it is for God. But if we act in a coherent and reasonable way, it is for you. ¹⁴ You see, the controlling force in our lives is the love of the Anointed One. And our confession is this: One died for all; therefore, all have died. ¹⁵ He died for us so that we will all live, not for ourselves, but for Him who died and rose from the dead. ¹⁶ Because of all that God has done, we now have a new perspective. We used to show regard for people based on worldly standards and interests. No longer. We used to think of the Anointed the same way. No longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is united with the Anointed One, that person is a new creation. The old life is gone—and see—a new life has begun! ¹⁸ All of this is a gift from our Creator God, who has pursued us and brought us into a restored and healthy relationship with Him through the Anointed. And He has given us the same mission, the ministry of reconciliation, to bring others back to Him. ¹⁹ It is central to our good news that God was in the Anointed making things right between Himself and the world. This means He does not hold their sins against them. But it also means He charges us to proclaim the message that heals and restores our broken relationships with God and each other.

²⁰ So we are now representatives of the Anointed One, the Liberating King; God has given us a charge to carry through our lives—urging all people on behalf of the Anointed to become reconciled to the Creator God. ²¹ He orchestrated this: the Anointed One, who had never experienced sin, became sin for us so that in Him we might embody the very righteousness of God.

6 As for those of us working as His emissaries,^[e] we beg you not to take the grace of God lightly. ² For God says through Isaiah,

Look, now the time is right! See, your day of deliverance is here! ³ We are careful in what we teach so that our words won’t be a stumbling block and so that no one will discredit our ministry. ⁴ But as God’s servants, we commend ourselves in every situation. So that with great endurance we persevere even in anguish and hardship. We have been cornered by the enemy ⁵ suffering beatings, imprisonments, uproars, toil, sleeplessness, and starvation. ⁶ And by the Holy Spirit with purity, understanding, patience, kindness, and sincerest love we have proved ourselves. ⁷ Now with the voice of truth and power of God—armed on the right and armed on the left with righteousness from God—we continue. ⁸ Whether respected or loathed, praised or criticized as frauds, yet true, ⁹ as unknown to this world, and yet well known to God, we serve Him. We are treated as dying and yet we live, as punished and yet we are not executed. ¹⁰ Though we are sorrowful, we continually rejoice. As the poorest of the poor, we bring richness to all, and though we have nothing, we possess all things.

¹¹ Corinthians, we have been completely open to you. We’ve exposed the truth, holding nothing back while our hearts open wide to take you in. ¹² We have revealed our affection toward you—though it’s obvious you have a hard time showing your affection toward us. ¹³ If I could offer some fatherly advice: open yourselves up as children; share your hearts with us as we have done for you.